Page 62 of Malcroix Bones Academy (Bones and Shadow #1)

I leaned my head against the car’s window, fighting nausea, staring out at city lights I couldn’t make sense of through the green and gold fog around my head.

My skull pounded. I squinted at the person next to me, but my vision only slanted out more whenever I tried to focus on their face.

I could only see a blur on the seat, and a silvery-blue light on the floor.

I knew where I was, though. I was in a taxi.

My mind conjured the word, and latched onto it.

I was in a taxi.

“Keep going,” my robed companion barked at the driver. “All the way to that address. Turn off the meter,” they added. “And don’t answer your phone.”

“Of course.” The driver’s voice came out blank, monotone. “Yes. I will do that.”

They were using magic on him, too.

Understanding around my situation cycled back again.

Someone had kidnapped me and brought me to Overworld. Why?

But the reason was obvious, wasn’t it? They wanted rid of me.

But why not just kill me now? Why not just kill me on the grounds of the school?

They’d drugged me and dragged me here, knowing I’d get caught, and end up in Magical prison, or worse.

They could kill me now, and why would anyone care?

From what Caelum told me, half the people in charge of the Magique world governments were blood supremacists connected to Dark Cathedral.

Would they go after Archie too, try to make him look complicit?

Gods, this was all my fault. They’d found out I was looking into them.

They’d known what Caelum and I were up to.

I scrabbled for cab’s door. In my clouded, weaving mind, it seemed like my only chance.

I had to run. I had to jump out of the car, find somewhere to hide until the drug wore off, then, what?

Find another mirror? If I could just get back to Malcroix Bones, maybe I could find Caelum.

We could go to Professor Forsooth. Forsooth was definitely the only Magical in authority I trusted enough for this.

And sure, it wasn’t much of a plan, and maybe a lot of the details didn’t entirely make sense, but I had to try.

It struck me then, I knew where a mirror was already.

If I could just find a way back to that Victorian house on the outskirts of Southampton, I could use the mirror in the stone crypt in my aunt’s garden.

I was trying to get a grip on the door’s latch, when the hooded figure let out a guttural string of words.

A painfully cold wind blew over my skin…

right before my body froze in place. My muscles locked as if they’d been encased in ice.

My back remained hunched. My eyes stared down on the door handle, but I could no longer pull on it.

My fingers froze where they’d grabbed the latch, but the door remained locked, and I simply held it, unmoving.

I fought to breathe, to move my eyes. My chest and lungs moved the bare minimum to keep me alive, but I still felt like I was suffocating. I couldn’t turn my head.

“Don’t get any more stupid ideas,” the voice next to me said.

I couldn’t answer.

I remained stuck there, my body frozen, for what felt like an endless stretch of silence. I couldn’t even raise my eyes, so I couldn’t see through the car window. I could only hunch there, breathing, heart beating, and I couldn’t even control how much I did that.

Time stretched.

I fought to think through the hiss of the car’s tires over rain-wet roads, and the rain itself when it began pattering down on the windshield and the roof of the car. I’d been with Caelum. Someone knocked him down and kidnapped me. Where was he now?

Was he awake? Was he alive? Would he go for help?

Gods. Was he alive?

The question paralyzed me. It hadn’t occurred to me until then that he might not be.

That magic could have been fatal. He could be dead.

My chest clenched, fighting painfully against the automated, magical breathing as I stared down at the taxi’s worn door. My eyes burned, until I couldn’t even see that.

I looked for my monocerus, but couldn’t feel it with my magic. I felt for the sun primal, instead, the one that floated above my head.

It appeared immediately behind my eyes.

Relief flooded me, enough to bring more tears.

I could see the flaming sun clearly, even if it still didn’t look quite right.

Flames shot from its aura, blurring into blue-green, flaming threads.

It felt erratic, chaotic, volatile. It got a little better, though, when I focused on it.

The harder I concentrated, the clearer it became, and the more I felt its fiery warmth in the rest of my body.

I put all of my intention and will into that liquid fire.

Caelum? I whispered.

I imagined I felt some spark, some bare hint of his presence.

I reached out with as much of myself as I could.

CAELUM! CAELUM PLEASE! HELP ME!

I strained to feel him on the other end.

I knew it was probably futile. We weren’t even in the same dimension. I imagined I could see and feel him anyway. I saw his face, eyes closed. I almost, almost felt something else, some whisper or spark of his mind, or?

The car came to a squeaking, squealing stop.

“We’re here,” the voice next to me said.

That harsh voice snapped me out of my golden sun.

Rain pattered down on the metal roof, and the windows.

“You can unlock the doors now,” the voice instructed the driver.

The locks made a clicking sound around the vehicle.

Everything I felt in that voice was dark, dead, harsh. It was the opposite of what I’d felt in the writhing, sparking, out of control sun.

A talon-like hand grabbed my arm.

“Come on,” the voice hissed.

The magic that had held me frozen released me abruptly.

It happened so fast, my head smacked into the window. I gasped in pain, raising a hand. I’d been straining so hard through my primal, I must have put all of that tension into my muscles, too. Either way, the impact was hard enough to crack the glass.

It was hard enough to stun me, whiting out my vision.

Pain blinded me next, but I could move again, at least.

I pressed my fingers lightly to the already-forming lump.

I still held my forehead protectively when the door jerked open in front of me.

The hooded figure must have released me in disgust when I slammed my head.

They’d gotten out of the car on the other side, and walked around the back of the cab to reach me from outside.

Now they stood over me in the dark, rain dripping down from the black hood.

Their talon-like hand gripped my arm, wrenching my hand off my face.

But I knew her now.

My vision had cleared just enough, maybe from the same blow to my head.

“Ankha.” My tongue turned my words into a thick slur. “Where are we?”

“Shut up, girl,” the witch hissed. “Get out of the car. Now.”

She yanked on my arm, hard enough, with enough magic behind it, I fell head-first out of the taxi’s back seat.

I landed on the gravel on my knees and hands.

My aunt yanked me to my feet before I could recover, still gripping my arm.

That iron grip kept me upright while she used her other hand to slam shut the cab’s door.

“Go away,” Ankha snapped at the driver.

The man jumped in his seat, then hammered his foot down on the gas.

The car’s wheels spun. He fishtailed backwards off the edge of the driveway, then wrenched the wheel around to take the cab back onto the road.

I recognized the road now, too.

I stared up at the familiar gate, which I’d looked at every day as I walked to and from the bus stop on my way to my human school.

The house beyond was completely dark. I heard an owl in a nearby tree, and the distant sound of the cab as it reached the end of the road, but otherwise, it was deathly still.

When the car sounds faded, I heard nothing at all.

“Move,” Ankha growled.

I only stood there until the older witch’s fingers dug into the flesh of my arm. Ankha began dragging me, stiff-legged to the gate, as my mind whirled, looking for a way out.

Archie was inside.

I stared up at the silent, ramshackle Victorian.

I had to go with her. I had to, even if I strongly suspected my aunt didn’t intend for me to leave the house alive.